John Baldessari

About

John Baldessari, renowned artist and art educator, was a Master Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, where he conducted master classes with selected artists in 1993.

John Baldessari was born in National City, California in 1931. He attended San Diego State University and did post-graduate work at Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA from 1970 – 1988 and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996 – 2007. Baldessari’s artwork has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and in over 1000 group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His projects include artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works. His awards and honors include the 2014 National Medal of Arts Award, an award from the International Print Center New York in 2016, memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the BACA International 2008, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded by La Biennale di Venezia and the City of Goslar Kaiserring in 2012. He has received honorary degrees from the National University of Ireland, San Diego State University, Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, and California College of the Arts. He currently works in Venice, California. Recent projects include exhibitions at Sprüth Magers Gallery Los Angeles in 2016, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany in 2015, Marian Goodman Gallery London in 2015, an exhibition at the Garage Center of Contemporary Culture (Moscow, Russia) in 2013 and the 2009-2010 traveling retrospective “John Baldessari: Pure Beauty.” John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné, Volume One: 1956-1974 was published by Yale University Press in 2012, Volume Two: 1975-1986 was released in 2014, and Volume Three: 1987-1993 was released in 2016; A collection of his writings titled, More Than You Wanted to Know About John Baldessari Volume 1 and Volume 2 was published by JRP|Ringier in 2013.

Image Gallery

At SFAI

Additional Work

For John Baldessari, Conceptual Art Means Serious Mischief : NPRhttp://www.npr.org/2013/03/11/173745543/for-john-baldessari-conceptual-art-means-serious-mischiefArtist John Baldessari is an iconic figure in some modern art circles. His conceptual pieces — black-and-white photographs covered with colorful dots, a blue sky painted on a museum floor — can provoke smiles. But serious ideas lie beneath the surface.